- One reason that cancer patients can have a poor response to a cancer therapy is due to the cancer cell’s ability to evade the therapy, through a variety of means including mutations to their own genome. A group of researchers from Italy explored the way colorectal cancer cells increase the rate of DNA mutations to evade targeted therapy. The study was published in Science.
- The first attempt in the United States to use CRISPR gene editing technology for cancer management was reported this week. A phase I trial showed safety and feasibility of using this technology in cancer immunotherapy and a potential for its further exploration in cancer management. The study will be presented next month at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology.
- Researchers from the University of Nottingham developed a blood test using protein microarray screening technology which can detect breast cancer “up to five years before there are any clinical signs of it.” This was reported at 2019 NCRI Cancer Conference.
- Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University found evidence that tumor cells spread increases when they are suffering from oxygen deprivation, or hypoxia. The study was published in October in Nature Communications.
Author Archives: Marina
Article Usage Count in Scopus and Web of Science
It is well known that the number of times an individual journal article is cited is one of the top metrics of scholarly impact. Still, there are other metrics which may be useful in determining the popularity of an article. One such metric is item usage statistics. In electronic resources, usage statistics may show different aspects of access and usage, for example, number of downloads, abstracts views, etc. Some databases (ex., Scopus, Web of Science) offer limited usage metrics in each record.
In Scopus, usage count is provided via PlumX Metrics (featured in a previous Library blog post). Click on the PlumX Metrics icon located in the right upper corner of each Scopus record to see article metrics, including some usage statistics, as well as exposure of the article in social media.
In Web of Science usage count is built in and provided for each article. Search results can be sorted by usage.
To see the usage count for an article, click on its title in the search result list and scroll down.The usage count can be found on the right hand pane of the record.
Metastatic Cancer Cell Migration and More
- Researchers from Vanderbilt University studied how cancer cells conserve energy during metastatic migration. The “first study to quantify the energetic costs of cancer cells during metastasis” was published in Nature Communications.
- A team of engineers and cancer biologists from Ohio State University explored the effect of electromagnetic fields on breast cancer cell migration and created tools to hinder the spread of metastatic breast cancer cells The new study which lays the foundation for further animal and human studies was published in Communications Biology.
- Researchers from Michigan State University and Stanford University discovered that nano-sized extracellular vesicles produced by healthy cells in human body can transport therapeutic agents (gene-directed enzymes, drug therapies) to cancer cells. This new approach shows great potential for future treatment strategies according to the authors of the study published in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.
- New research from a team at Imperial College in London and their colleagues from Italy contributed to the debate on breast cancer recurrence after treatment with hormone therapies. Their findings suggest that adjuvant endocrine therapy, a type of hormone therapy, while killing some cancer cells, only puts others in a dormant state. This study was also published in Nature Communications.